Distillations | Science History Institute

For centuries people have been drawn to the potential healing powers of colored light. From a civil war general to a Thomas Edison wannabe, people have touted it as a medical miracle. Despite claims to the contrary, though, colored light won’t regrow limbs or heal burns. And yet, we are still drawn to the idea that somehow it can fix us. Today there are actual medical studies investigating the health benefits of colored light. So is there any validity to the claims of the past? Can color really heal us? This episode was inspired by our museum exhibition, BOLD: Color from Test Tube to Textile, on view through August 3, 2024. Credits Host: Alexis Pedrick Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Sarah Kaplan Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Color Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions  

In his epic poem, The Odyssey, Homer mentions the colors black, white, red, and yellow. But despite numerous mentions of the brilliant Greek sea and sky, the word blue never makes an appearance.  This omission set off a debate between perception and language that would repeat itself over and over again throughout history: was there something wrong with the ancient Greek’s eyes? If they didn’t name blue, did that mean they couldn’t see it? We treat color like it's a clear measure of whether or not our brains are working the same. We expect an answer we can all agree on. Only it turns out some colors elude us. So when it comes to blue, are we truly seeing things differently or just seeing the same thing and describing it differently? Credits Host: Alexis Pedrick Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Sarah Kaplan Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Color Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions  

Check out our new season, dropping weekly on Tuesdays, starting June 4th.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a new public interest in health inequities research. With this new focus, there also has come new funding with many researchers and institutions clamoring to receive lucrative funding and recognition in the field, but there are no official guidelines to distinguish a health equity expert. In this episode we sit down with Dr. Elle Lett who coined the term "health equity tourism" to describe when privileged and previously unengaged scholars enter the health equity field without developing the necessary expertise. Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producers: Padmini Raghunath & Sarah Kaplan Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

Of all wealthy countries, the United States is the most dangerous place to have a baby. Our maternal mortality rate is abysmal, and over the past five years it’s only gotten worse. And there are huge racial disparities: Black women are three times more likely to die than white women. Despite some claims to the contrary, the problem isn’t race, it’s racism. In this episode we trace the origins of this harrowing statistic back to the dawn of American gynecology—a field that was built on the bodies of enslaved women. And we’ll meet eight women who have dedicated their lives to understanding and solving this complex problem. Credits Host: Alexis Pedrick  Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Certain medical instruments have built-in methods of correcting for race. They’re based on the premise that Black bodies are inherently different from White bodies. The tool that measures kidney function, for example, underestimates how severe some Black patients’ kidney disease is, and prevents them from getting transplants. Medical students and doctors have been trying to do away with race correction tools once and for all. And they’re starting to see some success. About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race “Correcting Race” is Episode 9 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innateis made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Credits  |   Resource List   |   Transcript Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.   Resource List A Unifying Approach for GFR Estimation: Recommendations of the NKF-ASN Task Force on Reassessing the Inclusion of Race in Diagnosing Kidney Disease, by Cynthia Delgado, Mukta Baweja, Deidra C Crews, Nwamaka D Eneanya, Crystal A Gadegbeku, Lesley A Inker, Mallika L Mendu, W Greg Miller, Marva M Moxey-Mims, Glenda V Roberts, Wendy L St Peter, Curtis Warfield, Neil R Powe A Yearslong Push to Remove Racist Bias From Kidney Testing Gains New Ground, by Theresa Gaffney   ‘An entire system is changing’: UW Medicine stops using race-based equation to calculate kidney function, by Shannon Hong  Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics, by Lundy Braun  Expert Panel Recommends Against Use of Race in Assessment of Kidney Function, by Usha Lee McFarling  Hidden in Plain Sight – Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms, by Darshali A. Vyas, Leo G. Eisenstein, and David S. Jones Medical student advocates to end racism in medicine, by Anh Nguyen  Precision in GFR Reporting Let’s Stop Playing the Race Card, by Vanessa Grubbs  Reconsidering the Consequences of Using Race to Estimate Kidney Function, by Nwamaka Denise Eneanya,  Wei Yang, Peter Philip Reese

When the plague broke out in San Francisco in 1900 the public health department poured all of their energy into stopping its spread in Chinatown, as if Chinatown were the problem. This episode reveals why they did it, what it has to do with race science, and what it tells us about the history of public health. Credits Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

In 2005 the FDA approved a pill to treat high blood preassure only in African Americans. This so-called miracle drug was named BiDil, and it became the first race-specific drug in the United States. It might sound like a good a good thing, but it had the unintended consequence of perpetuating the myth that race is a biological construct.  Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.   Resource List Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century, by Dorothy Roberts Oprah’s Unhealthy Mistake, by Osagie K. Obasogie Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age, by Jonathan Kahn Saving Sam: Drugs, Race, and Discovering the Secrets of Heart Disease, by Jay Cohn The Slavery Hypertension Hypothesis: Dissemination and Appeal of a Modern Race Theory, by Jay S Kaufman, Susan A Hall Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini

The word “Tuskegee” has come to symbolize the Black community’s mistrust of the medical establishment. It has become American lore. However, most people don’t know what actually happened in Macon County, Alabama, from 1932 to 1972. This episode unravels the myths of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Syphilis Study (the correct name of the study) through conversations with descendants and historians. Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. Resource List Black Journal; 301; The Tuskegee Study: A Human Experiment Descendants of men from horrifying Tuskegee study want to calm virus vaccine fears, by David Montgomery  Examining Tuskegee: The infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy  Nova: The Deadly Deception  Susceptible to Kindness: Miss Evers’ Boys and the Tuskegee Syphis Study  Tuskegee Legacy Stories Under the Shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and Health Care, by Vanessa Northington Gamble Voices For Our Fathers Legacy Foundation

In 1991, as crews broke ground on a new federal office building in lower Manhattan, they discovered human skeletons. It soon became clear that it was the oldest and largest African cemetery in the country. The federal government was ready to keep building, but people from all over the African diaspora were moved to treat this site with dignity, respect, and scientific excellence. When bioarchaeologist Michael Blakey took over, that's exactly what they got. But it wasn't easy. Credits Host: Alexis Pedrick  Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.   Resource List Archaeology under the Blinding Light of Race, by Michael Blakey African Burial Ground Project: Paradigm for Cooperation? by Michael Blakey The African Burial Ground in New York City: Memory, Spirituality, and Space, by Andrea E. Frohne The African Burial Ground: An American Discovery, documentary film by David Kutz Reassessing the “Sankofa Symbol” in New York's African Burial Ground, by Erik R. Seeman The New York African Burial Ground Final Reports, by multiple authors